Adeola Akinremi is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of DACA. With expertise and professional experience spanning over two decades in Journalism and International development, Akinremi holds two master’s degrees in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and another in Project Development and Implementation from Nigeria’s premier college, the University of Ibadan. Before DACA, he served multilateral organizations (United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organization), international non-profits, corporations, and governments in over 60 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America –mostly as a policy advisor and in strategic communications roles. A former journalist, with extensive travel on international development assignments, he traveled quite a lot to meet with stakeholders, including performing site visits to multiple countries for strategic dialogue around consequential national policies. His gift to engage community power for development and policy change has transformed policy processes in many African countries.  

He has held high-level meetings with senior government leaders and agencies. He led the Africa campaign for the ratification and implementation of the WHO global health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), building partnerships and coalition around articles of the convention in more than 48 countries, while having engagement with senior government leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. He attended multiple treaty negotiation meetings in Geneva, Switzerland, which gave him the opportunity to broaden his contacts and network with diplomats, connect with government leaders and improved knowledge on international affairs.  

A serial social enterprise, he founded Journalists Action on Tobacco & Health (JATH) in the year 2000 to improve the level of awareness among global journalists about the smoking epidemic in Africa and how tobacco companies target the continent for profit.  

In 2019, he co-founded Policy Vault Africa, a nonprofit with first online repository of policies and regulations across all sectors for African national governments with advisory services to governments, investors, researchers, and other nonprofits as enabler of policy change for economic growth on the continent.